Usman Bugaje
27 April 2008
opinion
Erosion of Trust and Confidence in Governance - when courts confirm leaders who are widely believed to have rigged their elections, the leaders will remain with all the paraphernalia of office, the siren and the cosmetics of power but they may not have the trust and confidence of the people they are suppose to lead. It is not only the political leaders who will suffer from this fatal deficiency; the judiciary will also lose this trust and confidence, so will the security agencies, especially the police. The effects of this loss of trust and confidence may look on the surface trivial and of no serious consequences. In Nigeria, leaders tend to
dismiss any such protest as transient, which will fade in a matter of months and can be remedied once government starts throwing money around. Our very experiences have shown that throwing money at problems does not solve them, it only compounds them and make it chronic, as the experience in the Niger-Delta amply demonstrates.
More fundamentally absence of public trust and confidence frustrate the realization of government's development goals. A good example, if a very sad one, is how the polio immunization, which is succeeding everywhere in the globe, is consistently failing in Nigeria. And for as long as that of Nigeria fails it will continue to endanger the rest of the world.
Our government has wrongly and lazilly assumed that the poor villages who fear that the vaccine may contain something harmful are simply uneducated populace that needs to be educated. It is lost on their minds that these are people who listen to world service radio stations and contribute intelligently to debates, even on American foreign policies.
Their lack of cooperation stems from the crisis of confidence, that they cannot trust their leaders. And why should they trust people who tell them lies consistently, leaders who fail to keep their words, leaders who steal their resources, leaders who will rig elections right in front of their houses? Government has attempted to use traditional and religious leaders to convince them, but this has not quite worked because these leaders are also seen to be part of the big fraud, for some of the rigging, like in Gombe State, was done inside the palaces and as soon as a rigged ruler is sworn in, it is the religious scholars who will be the first to call and will be seen on television praying for God's protection for the "elected" office holder. For as long as leaders ignore and dismiss their citizenry and continue to rig themselves into offices for that long people will continue to distrust them and tragedies like the polio scourge will continue.
Destroying ethical Foundations for future generations - students of history may recall Professor Abdullahi Smith's constant reference to the ingredients of state formation and his concern for the urgent need to give young people a 'glimpse of things worth fighting for'.
It is important to ask the question, what values are we bequeathing to the younger generation? What standard of behavior do we expect these young people to aspire to? In these times of democratic recession, when we talk about the rule of law and still go round to violate these very rules, rob people of their mandate in day light, what do we expect these young people to think of us? I wish our researchers will take a survey of what these younger generations think of us. Many of us are likely to be shocked at their rage and the way they will dismiss all of us as a bunch of fraudulent and dishonest lot who have destroyed their country when older generations elsewhere are busy building their country for posterity.
I have no doubt in mind that the day they will get the chance they will show us what they think of us, they will deal with us and rightly so. For we have shown them 'might is right'. We have also shown them that it doesn't always pay to go to court; not because it is how much you can prove rather than how much you know, but because it is increasingly becoming about how much you are worth. Will we be surprised if our young people all turned into armed robbery, for in essence what is the difference between what the mighty and the powerful do and what the armed robbers attempt to do?
Many may have read a story reported in the papers told of a student in a college of education who was caught cheating in exams. He argued with his teachers that they have no right to punish him since what he did was not different from what the ruling party did a few weeks ago under every body's nose. Who ever thought that the cheating and rigging will come to the prestigious Argungu fishing festival? But there it is in the inner recess of a most traditional event.
Do we realize what we are doing to our future? Do we realize that we are eroding the very foundations of our society? Do we realize that the police, the Army, and the men of the SSS or even the egbo-egbos of the judiciary, who help us to rig elections and confirm us on our seats, will not be to any avail when this Armageddon breaks out?
Recipe for a Culture of Violence - One message that comes across from these fraudulent elections and some of the judgments that have upheld the elections, is that, once you can tilt the balance of terror in your favour, you are home and dry. Many who have armed and drugged our youth, all for pittance, have succeeded in having their way in elections.
It has now become the norm, once you are running for an elective office, you have to create or hire a gang of ruthless youth who will be marauding, visiting violence and havoc on citizens. In fact there is already a whole service industry for the supply of thugs mushrooming; off season they will turn to armed robbery and in time graduate to militias that will provide cover for smuggling and bunkering when they are not kidnapping the children of the rich and the powerful. Every part of the country will be turned into Niger-Delta.
The writ of our police and armed forces may have to shrink to a 'green zone' which may well be their barracks and the various State Houses. This tragedy will be all because our leaders must win elections, by hook or crook, and they must win cases at the tribunals by whatever means possible.
It is this inordinate ambition to rule by African leaders that is destroying our societies, breaking our unity, undermining our growth and development, visiting untold sufferings to our poor citizens and pushing the whole country to the brink. Look at Kenya, the ambition of one old man to rule forever led to the death of over one thousand of his people and made nearly a million refugees, caused colossal economic losses and the country is still to find its feet. The same disaster is about to unfold in Zimbabwe. For how long are we going to continue to allow our leaders, after stealing us blind and leaving us in darkness, to continue to visit us with suffering and death, in their craze to rule? If we lost our courage, have we also lost our survival instinct? What kind of creatures are we? It was the German Poet, Friedrich von Schiller, who remarked that, "against stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain."
Deepening Cynicism and worsening Apathy and Lack of Commitment - Who then will bother to come out to vote? If all you need to come to and remain in power is a combination of thuggery, police "cooperation" and enough money to bribe the judiciary, who will ever care about people when he or she gets there? Where will democracy be in these circumstances? Who will invest in or even trade with such a country? What then will become of the economy? Does anybody care? Is there any hope?
These are some of the questions that ought to engage all of us, if only we are in our senses.
It is too early to forget that voter turnout for the 1999 elections was over 70%, reflecting the enthusiasm for and hope in democracy. By the 2003 election this dropped to about 35%. Just a year later, 2004, at the Local Government elections, the turnout flopped to a miserable 10%, the EU figure was about 8%. Why? Because of the absence of internal democracy and electoral fraud; the electorate decided to vote with its feet, by not bothering to even come out. If the courts are not able to restore voter confidence by delivering justice and rectifying the fraud it is difficult to see how and why the electorate will bother to come out to vote. For what will be the motivation, if your vote does not count? And once faith is lost in the electoral process, what more is left of the polity?
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
